Rosetta Stone: Get ready to talk business – Tom Adams

As companies seek headway in new markets and tap the rich skills base on offer, two major trends have emerged. Firstly, the English language has taken on greater weight, with many companies considering it to be the lingua franca of choice. Secondly, multilingualism has become an important requirement for workers in the developed world.

"In the UK, almost half of FTSE CEOs were born outside of the UK and a fair number of those have lived and worked internationally," explains Tom Adams, CEO of Rosetta Stone.

"A survey in the US revealed that half of business leaders would choose a multilingual employee over somebody who wasn't, despite the country having a huge domestic economy. At the same time, even companies in places like Japan are now making it mandatory that meetings be conducted in English."

Unfortunately, many commonly employed methods of language learning have their shortcomings. Often, insufficient emphasis is placed on conversational proficiency, so even if an individual's formal grounding is strong, there are many daily situations in which they struggle. A recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit revealed that while 75% of senior executives expect their companies to compete in more foreign markets over the next decade, the majority see significant cultural and linguistic barriers to hiring globally.

"Companies that are hiring very talented employees from Japan, China and South Korea will have staff that aced the test, but still can't speak fluently and can't participate in business meetings in the way you'd want them to," Adams says. "For language to be used on demand, you have to learn it the right way."

The solution offered by Rosetta Stone is entirely geared towards spoken proficiency. The company makes use of the immersion method, which means that language is taught directly without translation or explanations of grammar and structure. Learners speak a new language naturally from the beginning and develop reading, writing and listening skills. The system aims to revert to the fundamentals of language learning, moving away from the traditional, often overly analytical methods that many have grown accustomed to.

"Look at a two-year-old child," Adams explains. "When they are learning a language, they are not analysing it, they are merely figuring it out. Through this they can achieve grammatical excellence with no formal instruction. A distinguishing feature of Rosetta Stone is that if you were to study a language that you'd never studied before, within ten minutes you'd have learnt lots of new things. You'd know that you know it, but not necessarily how."

Rosetta Stone® Enterprise TOTALe™

The company's main corporate offering is known as Rosetta Stone Enterprise TOTALe. Consisting of almost 250 hours of interactive sequences, there is sufficient content to delve deeply into the language. The programme also offers opportunities to converse with native speakers to help crystallise what has already been learned, aided by the latest in speech recognition technology.

"The technologies we deploy include things like speech recognition, which we developed in-house, and which is perfect for language learning," Adams says. "Our competitors who offer it, and they are the exception, license it from off-the-shelf providers who use the voices of native speakers. These engines aren't tolerant of foreign mispronunciation. We also have native-speaking instructors that you can engage with online. This allows learners to practice the acquired language skills in live conversations, which helps build their confidence for real-life interactions with other speakers. They don't teach you: they make you use the language you've learnt."

Learn as you go

Adams is already seeing Rosetta Stone become an integral part of many companies' long-term strategies. As executives move to different parts of the globe, the ability to learn on the move becomes more important. Rosetta Stone can be accessed and updated on a variety of devices, giving it an edge over more traditional learning tools.

"We work with some of the largest companies in the world," he says. "Some companies, such as Marriott International, make Rosetta Stone a key part of their ongoing staff development. Traditionally, companies sought to help employees with their language needs by putting tutors in place. This can be effective if done the right way, but Rosetta Stone gives executives the opportunity to learn on the go. Whether it's on your iPad, iPhone or computer, you can access these resources and keep progressing."

With this trend towards multilingualism set to remain, Adams is confident that the value of the immersive method used by Rosetta Stone will continue to be recognised.

"Over the five levels of the Rosetta Stone Enterprise TOTALe platform, a user will spend a minimum of 20 hours conversing with a native speaker in the target language," he says. "That's very powerful for both the learner and the organisation."